On to Summer

The heat and humidity really seem to have moved in this week, so it's feeling a lot like summer around here. Following the Tour de La, I skipped riding on Monday and got most of the post-event stuff taken care of, so by Wednesday everything was closed out. Say what you will about the soon to be updated USAC website, but for people who have to deal with more than one or two events a year, the system for all its flaws is still way better than filling out paper reports, waiting for checks to arrive in the mail, writing out and mailing checks and forms, and basically taking three weeks to close out a race. The local bank made an awesome video of the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium. You can find it on their website (scroll down to June 5).

Anyway, with the Tour behind me I went out for the group ride Tuesday morning feeling like I'd been off the bike for three weeks instead of three days. It was warm and humid, like it's been all week, but other than that it seemed like a fairly subdued ride, and toward the end I finally started to feel more or less normal again. Wednesday's WeMoRi, on the other hand, just seemed inexplicably hard to me. Out on Lakeshore Drive saw the break with Jaden and Rob and jumped onto it. They were just fifteen seconds or so ahead of the rest of the group, I guess, and were going fairly hard. The leap from 16 mph to 27-28 mph seemed particularly difficult and I was still not recovered from it as we turned off of Wisner onto Harrison. I may have taken one very brief pull, but was otherwise sitting staying on the back as Jaden and Rob traded pulls. Then, Rob took what turned out to be one last hard pull toward the end of Harrison.  I should have known better, but I guess I was a little anoxic at the time and dropped back a bit to let him slide in ahead of me like I'd been doing. The only problem was that he was done for the day and eased up, leaving a shockingly fast-growing gap in front of me to Jaden. I was already on the rivet, so any effort I made to close it probably wouldn't have been discernible to the naked eye.  I watched Jaden round the corner onto Marconi, made the turn myself, and to my relief looked back and saw the group behind me. I eased up for a moment to recover and slotted back into the pack when it swallowed me up. The rest of the ride was pretty moderate until the final mile when the speed went up to 31 or 32 and kind of stayed there.  I spent a long time at Starbucks sipping a heavily sugared iced coffee after that. Thursday's ride seemed quite fast to me as well, no thanks to a relentless crosswind, but I survived it OK I guess. This morning I went out for an easy ride with the Tulane Friday Ride group, which this time of year is composed of 3-5 people on a good day.

I've never seen anything like this.

So I guess everyone has heard about the terrible car "accident" (the driver has been charged with MURDER) that happened in Kalamazoo.  Five riders killed and the rest of the group hospitalized when some guy just plowed in to a regular little group ride, apparently at a high rate of speed judging by the result and the extensive damage to the front end of the pickup truck. The group looked to be a regular fitness/social group - riders with triple chainrings and mirrors and that sort of thing - so they were probably riding well over to the right of the road at a moderate and controlled speed. As far as I know the police still aren't saying what they think caused the accident and interestingly haven't said anything about intoxication, so that seems ominous. If it was basically an intentional slaughter by some nutcase, that's pretty frightening. Even if it isn't, getting plowed down from behind by a distracted and/or drunk driver is pretty much everyone's biggest fear nowadays.  When I started riding, that sort of thing just never seemed to happen. Maybe it's just because there were a lot fewer of us out on the roads, but I suspect otherwise.

This weekend will be just training rides for me. Some of the Palmer guys are up in OK for Tulsa Tough, and hopefully I'll be able to catch some of the live-stream of their races. Although I may have had some slight delusions about my own racing capabilities in my younger days, I've never ever had any doubt that I lacked sufficient toughness for Crybaby Hill.